“Plastic Brits” — and the Mail’s struggle to decide who isn’t British

Manufique! That was the Daily Mail's back-page headline celebrating England's rugby victory in Paris, as Tuilagi's "sensational" try ignited a performance that "put the pride back" in the nation's rugby.

Contrast that with the inside pages, where the paper's chief sportswriter, Martin Samuel, railed against "a front row of Manu Tuilagi brick-outhouse types, imported almost to order", in a column billed as defending the paper's campaign against "plastic Brits" from charges of hypocrisy.

The fierce polemics of the Mail's sportswriters against some of the foreign-born athletes who have qualified to compete for Britain have demonstrated a comical inability to agree among themselves over whose British identity to challenge as fake.

Friday's back page declared that "It could have been Mo Farah or Jessica Ennis but, incredibly, our athletes are being led by a plastic Brit" to complain about the athletics team captaincy of Tiffany Porter, an American-born runner who has had held dual US and British nationality since birth, but had declined to sing the national anthem when challenged by the paper's reporter at a press conference on Thursday.

By Saturday morning, as Mail headlines hailed Ennis as a "True Brit" for her dignity in pentathlon defeat, the columnist Des Kelly was questioning Farah's British credentials, too: "That the Somalian-born runner who lives in Portland, Oregon, was on hand to refute the accusations that Porter was not 'British' enough . . . proves the British do irony better than any other nation," he wrote, in what seemed a dramatic, off-message extension of the net of plastic suspicion.

Even as Kelly argued an analogy between Farah and Porter, the veteran Olympic reporter Neil Wilson was still contrasting those athletes. He would cheer for Porter's foreign opponents, hoping to keep the "plastic Brit" off the podium, but was excited by Farah's medal chances, because his arrival in the UK aged eight to join his British father had nothing to do with athletic opportunity.

What's the story?

Aldama spoke emotionally after winning gold on Saturday about the "plastic" gibes. "Of course I am British. I have lived in this country for 11 years. My children are British. Sixty per cent of my friends are British. This is definitely my home."

Aldama has had an extraordinary journey to British citizenship. Nobody doubts her eligibility for citizenship, but Samuel has written that "it doesn't feel right" that she should represent a third nation at the Olympics.

Another of the first "plastic" targets has been Shara Proctor, a British citizen from the overseas dependent territory of Anguilla, which has no Olympic committee or team. The Mail's Olympics correspondent Jonathan McAvoy declares he has no objection, given that Anguilla is a British territory. Samuel is softening here, arguing today for Britain to lobby for Anguila to get Olympic status, and "if that fails, we'll see". (His logic would imply that a Falklands athlete could be a "plastic Brit", too, because the island also has a Commonwealth Games team.)

Why can't the Mail agree on who it wants to declare to be un-British?

The Plastic Brits campaign conflates a legitimate issue of scrutiny of breaking or bending the immigration and citizenship rules to qualify an athlete with making a range of subjective (and inconsistent) challenges to athletes who do qualify under the rules.

Samuel wrote that "the point of international eligibility is that every case is different", dismissing as "paper-thin" the charges of hypocrisy over the Daily Mail's crusade for Zola Budd in 1984.

"I can pick up this phone and get her a passport in two days," David English, the Daily Mail's editor, told colleagues then. He exaggerated. It took him two weeks to bully a reluctant cabinet into fast-tracking Budd into the Olympic team, with unhappy results.

This time, the Mail supports the government's policy of no special treatment. So it could celebrate with a "No passports for plastic Brits" headline to celebrate that the Ukrainian-born weightlifters Yana Stadnik and Olga Butlkevych were refused citizenship despite having lived in Britain for five years.

The Mail has also argued in favour of barring anyone for whom sporting opportunity was a motive to change nations. But Britain's more open sporting tradition gave Basil D'Oliveira and Allan Lamb the chance to compete at Test level, and stretches right back to the great Indian Ranjitsinhji's centuries for England in 1896 and the contribution to Scotland's football victories of 1881 by black, Guinean-born Andrew Watson.

Recruitment bottlenecks

Shara Proctor's case directly resembles not just the Falklands' sole gold medallist, Louis Baillon, a member of the British hockey team for London 1908, but also that of the great sprinter McDonald Bailey, favourite of the Wembley crowds in 1948 and 100m bronze medallist in 1952, who accepted Britain's invitation to run because it was not yet clear if Trinidad would send a team.

There is a legitimate argument about the need for governing bodies to concentrate on developing British talent and not to push at the boundaries of the recruitment rules. That, however, could also be an argument for British-heritage basketball players from the NBA to play for us.

But where the Mail campaign breaks a core tradition of British citizenship is by continuing the argument about whom to recruit after the people have donned British colours.

We can legitimately debate whom to let in to join our community. But once an invitation is extended and accepted, we treat citizens as equals. We should do so with our athletes, too.

The Mail seems to worry that modern Britain won't recognise itself in its Olympic team. Des Kelly wrote on Saturday that, "out of 550 members of Team GB, approximately 50 will be foreign-born athletes with dual nationality". He believes this means that a team meeting "will resemble Heathrow Airport's Terminal Three during a baggage handlers' strike".

If Team GB is only nine-tenths British-born, that team meeting will look like Britain itself.

Twelve per cent of people in Britain today are foreign-born. Because that percentage is twice as high in London, the Olympic host city, the team of Olympic volunteers will probably have more multinational roots than Team GB. As a newspaper that celebrates patriotism and integration, the Mail could celebrate that 70 per cent of those born abroad feel a strong sense of belonging to Britain, even slightly outscoring those born in this country (66 per cent), as a State of the Nation poll found.

They don't think they are Plastic Brits; instead, they fly their flags with pride.

So, don't be surprised if the crowds at the Olympic stadium next summer cheer for every athlete representing Team GB.

I'm a Welsh Asian - so why doesn't the Welsh Assembly have a box for me to tick?

As someone born in Caerphilly, who grew up in Wales, and is learning Welsh, I feel nothing but Welsh. I am a proud Welsh Asian – and yet the Welsh Assembly appear to be telling me and many like me that that’s not an option.

An equalities form issued in Wales, by the Welsh Assembly, that does not have an option to identify as non-white and Welsh. What kind of message does this send, especially at a time of public worries about integration? Sadly, I am not so surprised at this from an institution which, despite a 17-year history, seems to still struggle with the very basics of equality and diversity.

By the omission of options to identify as Welsh and Asian, Welsh and black, Welsh and mixed heritage (I could go on), the Welsh Assembly's form has told us something wider about the institutional perception of our diverse communities in Wales. There are options on the form for "Asian or Asian British Indian" and "Black or Black British Caribbean", to give but two examples. And also for "White British", "White Irish" and "White Welsh". But not for "Asian Welsh", or "Black Welsh". Did it not occur to anyone that there was something wrong?

It seems like a monumental error by the Welsh Assembly Commission, which designed the form, and a telling one at that.

A predominantly white institution (there are two non-white Assembly members out of 60 and there has never been a female Black, Asian or minority ethnic Assembly member) has dictated which ethnic group is deemed to look Welsh enough to tick their box (for those of us Welsh Asians, it seems the only box to tick is that most Orientalist of descriptions, "Other").

Over the summer, meanwhile, we saw the First minister of Wales Carwyn Jones rather clumsily assemble his Brexit advisory group. This group was made up of predominantly white, middle aged men, and not a single person from a black, Asian and minority ethnic background. It seems that despite the box ticking exercises, the First Minister is taking advice from his “White Welsh” group.

And it matters. The Welsh Assembly was established with a statutory duty to promote equality in Wales. In June, 17 out of 22 local authority areas in Wales voted Leave. Post-referendum, our proud Welsh BAME communities have been affected by hate crime. The perpetrators wish to draw a distinction between "them" and "us". Our national parliament is doing nothing to challenge such a distinction. Does it really think there are no non-white Welsh people in Wales?

So what you can ✅White & Welsh but Black or Asian & Welsh is not an option?! Pretty poor & actually ignorant from the Assembly. https://t.co/upX9gerpiq

In Wales, we have a huge sense of overwhelming pride in what it means to be Welsh, from pride in our rugby and football teams, our language, to our food and our culture. Many friends over the years from different backgrounds have come to Wales to either study or work, fallen in love with our country and chosen to make it their home. They identify as Welsh. The thing about those of us who are Welsh and proud is that we understand that we are stronger in our diversity and stronger together as a Welsh nation. It’s a shame that our Welsh Assembly is not operating with that same sense of understanding that we have in our communities in Wales.

No doubt the nameless form creator simply copied a format seen elsewhere, and would argue the omission is not their fault. Yet in these tense times, such an omission seems to arrogantly suggest Welsh is something exclusively White.

The Welsh Assembly has a long way to travel on the road to creating a fairer society. From these kind of blunders, it seems clear that it is not even off the starting line.

Shazia Awan is an equality activist and Consultant advising on equality and diversity issues. She is launching Women Create, a social enterprise to help women and young people from disadvantaged backgrounds into enterprise and employment. She is Vice President of the Council for Voluntary Youth Services in Wales, is an Ambassador to Show Racism the Red Card and she was the first Asian woman to address a Welsh Tory party conference.

Shazia Awan is an equality activist. She is launching Women Create, a social enterprise to help women and young people from disadvantaged backgrounds into enterprise and employment. She is Vice President of the Council for Voluntary Youth Services in Wales and she was the first Asian woman to address a Welsh Tory party conference. You can follow her @shaziaawan.